Not that I’ve ever been or experienced this, but I can imagine waking up after the NME Awards isn’t likely to be the merriest of mornings for one’s head or one’s liver. An incubator for “hangsiety” and regrets, the awards ceremony has become synonymous with debauchery and cringeworthy moments since it’s debut back in 1953, and has often left it’s intoxicated winners going from hero to zero pretty fast. One such lucky winner was Yannis Philippakis and the rest of his band Foals, when the band won the award for Best Live Act back in 2020. The coveted award was a big scoop for them on the night, and despite being fairly obviously hammered, Yannis took the reigns of their acceptance speech and made a pretty good account of himself, raising the point of equal representation at festivals. Alas though, it wasn’t to last very long for the sauced singer from Oxford… the night was about to take a turn.
In a recent appearance on Shaun Keaveny’s podcast The Line-Up, ironically reported by the NME, the Foals frontman recounts his lack of memory of his awards speech and a rather awkward encounter he had later in the evening with The Cure’s legendary lead singer Robert Smith: “We were at the NME Awards, which is famously sloppy, and I think that I’d quit smoking, and I was drinking quickly, you know. I was really putting them away. And I get kind of nervous at those things anyway, like I think probably most people do. But, you know, I didn’t feel at ease.” Philippakis continued: “I got battered, basically got super drunk, and then we did win something. We went up there and I gave an interview that I think has been sort of scorched like it’s been taken out. There was video, but and I didn’t remember this until the next day, but I was like I was dancing in it and saying all sorts of stuff, but the thing I remember was looking at like some of my bandmates faces and like, you know, I was performing for the for the interview and for the interview and for the camera and then looking over and just kind of getting these mortified looks. But it was mid flow, you know, no one could stop me… I was just charged and I was going, and then we had to do a photo right after. So we’re backstage there where they were doing all the stuff, and Robert Smith’s there and he’s doing photos, and I’m refusing to leave the room in order to get a photo of Robert Smith. And I just remember one point, Edwin [Congreave, ex-Foals keyboardist], who has now left the band, being like, ‘please don’t embarrass me in front of Robert Smith. Please don’t embarrass me.’ I’m like, ‘I’m gonna get us a photo. Robert Smith!”
He concluded: “So we did manage to get a photo with Robert Smith, but it wasn’t good. And then the next day I woke up and did not remember the interview at all – or the photo! And somebody in the band had to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember. You were showing off and dancing around’. So yeah, it was all in all pretty bad. And I saw and apologised to Robert Smith recently.”
We feel for you Yannis.
